Design support apparatuses which support circuit design such as a computer aided design (CAD) apparatus and the like have been widespread. With a design support apparatus, a user repeatedly selects any of components which are to be arranged on a substrate as an arranging object component and arranges the arranging object component on the substrate, thus performing circuit design. In circuit design, as an interval between components on a substrate is reduced, components can be arranged in higher density. However, when an interval between components is too small, it may be difficult to mount components in a manufacturing process. Accordingly, a design support apparatus sets a region, for each component, which is to be secured in mounting of a component as an interference check region and checks whether interference check regions of respective components interfere each other or not, thus determining propriety of component arrangement.
Further, regarding a design support apparatus, the following techniques have been proposed. For example, such technique has been proposed that in a region on a substrate, an arrangement position of a component and a wiring route of wiring between components are alternately decided while avoiding components of which arrangement positions have been decided and wiring routs, so as to perform circuit design of high density. Further, such technique has been proposed that a width dimension of a gap between each pair of components arranged on a substrate and a minimum value of a gap between each pair of inputted components are turned into data and sizes of the gap width dimension and the minimum gap value are checked so as to design a printed board with higher density. Furthermore, such technique has been proposed that a candidate position on which a component is to be arranged is set on one face of a substrate, a candidate position of a soldering face is set on the other face of the substrate, and an arrangement position of a component is decided when the both candidate positions are not used for arrangement of a component.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 8-227428, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-207438, and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 4-69774 are examples of related art.
Apropos, there is a case where manufacturing processes in mounting of respective components which are arranged on a substrate are different from each other, so that it is not demanded to secure a region for mounting a component on the substrate even in a manufacturing process after mounting of respective components, as an interference check region. Therefore, as related art, in a case where a region to be secured in mounting of a component is set to be an interference check region and interference check of interference check regions of respective components is performed, the components may be arranged with excessively large intervals therebetween.
However, the fact that an interval to be secured with respect to other components varies due to difference in manufacturing processes of respective components is not taken into consideration in any of the techniques of related art. Therefore, components may be arranged with excessively large intervals therebetween.